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Showing posts from July, 2012

Japan Trip: Yokohama

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We are in Japan! And Japan is Awesome! My family lived here when I was born and I have not been back since we moved to the US so it is kind of a bucket list thing of mine to come back and visit. So I am pretty excited to be here. After spending a day here Lyndon is too. Coco is happy to be with us. We love her. We have divided up our time between the Tokyo area and down in the Kansai area. We are lucky to have family and friends that lives close to these areas. Our first day we spent with my cousin and her family in Yokohama. Yokohama is the second largest city in Japan. We spent the day walking around the city enjoying being back in the first world. We attended a Japanese branch. I was able to practice my Japanese some. I was understood and could understand. I took several semesters of Japanese when I attended university so I was very happy that all the hard work I put in has paid off a little. It has been a couple of years so I do not remember as much as I would like.

Happy First Birthday Cosette

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  Sunday was my baby's first birthday! I cannot believe that she is already one years old. She has changed so much. I miss my infant Cosette. The day she was born was one of the best days of our lives. She was perfect in every way when she was born and she still is perfect in every way.   We are in Japan now and did not celebrate her birthday properly. Once we get back to the US we will have her digging in her own cake. Happy Birthday Cosette!

Goodbye Philippines

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Our time in the Philippines has come to an end. I am kind of surprised how enjoyable it was because it was not easy in the beginning. I am happy to say that if I had to I could live there. We made a lot of good friends and will miss them very much. Everyone we met was so good there and we would have gotten through this experience with out them. Lyndon's co-workers threw us a couple of goodbye and birthday parties before we left. Everyone was sad that we were leaving before Cosette's birthday so they wanted to celebrate it early. The Public Affairs office threw us a fun going away lunch. We ate traditional Filipino food at the snack attack Lyndon's co-workers in the finance office gave us. Above is pancit which is rice noodles topped with a stir fry vegetables, meat, and eggs. Below is another pancit dish and lumpia which is an egg roll type food. Cosette loved the lumpia. She saw us dipping ours in a sauce and decided that is what she wanted to do wit

Pearls, pearls, pearls

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Manila is the place to get pearls. They have fresh water and the deep sea pearls in all shapes, sizes, and color. The best place to get them is the market at the Green Hills mall. This is where all my friends advised me to go because you can get the best deals on them there. We made a stop there and this is what we saw. This is how all the vendors were set up. I loved seeing all the different colors and shapes of the pearls. The deep sea pearls are the best quality and most expensive. That is just because they are HUGE and perfectly round. They are the highest quality available. The fresh water pearls are less expensive because they are not perfectly round. The larger and rounder the pearl the more expensive it is. I got a chance to use my bartering skills and won the price I wanted. The pearl market is huge. You kind of almost have to stay on one path so you do not get lost. Sorry this picture is not great but we found some really fun wood carved products h

Taxi Views Part 2

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Here are some more photos that I took while driving around the city. Enjoy! Locals hanging out. Yup, that is a viewing on the side of the street. Street food. Church. Side street with lots of street vendors. Monument. Shops and houses. Cool monument. It reminds me of the Magellan marker we saw in Cebu . This picture was take while we our cab was parallel in the street. That is how those cab drivers roll.

Work Filipino Style

Here at the end of our stay in  the Philippines I thought I should talk a little about what I've done while here. My work has been divided between two organizations. First I worked for the Area Legal Counsel Office of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the Philippine Area Office. The legal office here is only three people. Doug McAllister is the Area Legal Counsel, David Farnsworth is the Assistant Area Legal Counsel, and Cyntha Pelobello is the Legal Secretary. I did work in several different areas including contemplating the state of divorce in the Philippines, drafting donation deeds for various humanitarian efforts, researching the state of the priest-penitent privilege, creating pamphlets to teach priesthood leaders how to  to help victims of abuse recover and learning about the legislative processes in the Philippines. I also worked for the Philippine Center for Islam and Democracy. Here I mostly researched the state of women's rights in Islam. A

Trip to the Bazar

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Every month the American Women's Association organizes a bazar. Tons of vendors come with anything and everything. It is fantastic! The first week we were in the Philippines they had their May bazar and it was a bit overwhelming. It is held in this huge room and there a tons of vendors from the front all the way to the back. I am the type of person who likes to see everything before I make a decision on what to perchase. So my first trip to the bazar I came home with I think only two things. I have been here for the June and July bazars so by the thrid time around I am a pro. I know where the places I like are, I know when I am being ripped off, and I know exactly what I want.   Here Coco and I are at the bazar. You can see how big the room is. Sorry the pictures are not great. The group that runs the bazar does not allow pictures so I risked getting kicked out to take these. Filipinos are very creative. They take whatever materials they have and make whatever they